Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 160

Record label: Phillips (UK) Atlantic (US)

Produced: Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin

Recorded: American Studios, Memphis; September 1968; vocals overdubbed at Atlantic Studios, New York City

Released: January 13, 1969.

Chart peaks: None (UK) 99 (US)

Personnel: Bobby Wood (p); Bobby Emmons (o); Reggie Young (g); Gene Chrisman (d); Tommy Cogbill (b); The Sweet Inspirations (bv); Ed Kollis (e)

Track listing: Just A Little Lovin’; So Much Love; Son Of A Preacher Man (S); I Don’t Want To Hear It Anymore; Don’t Forget About Me; Breakfast In Bed; Just One Smile; The Windmills Of Your Mind; In The Land Of Make Believe; No Easy Way Down; I Can’t Make It Alone

Running time: 33.36

Current CD: Mercury 0632972 adds mono versions and original mixes of: Son Of A Preacher Man; Just A Little Lovin’; Don’t Forget About Me; Breakfast In Bed; I Don’t Want To Hear About It Anymore; The Windmills Of Your Mind; In The Land Of Make Believe; So Much Love

Further listening: A Girl Called Dusty (1964); Everything’s Coming Up Dusty (1965)

Further reading: Dusty Springfield: Dusty In Memphis 33 1/3 (Warren Zanes, 2003); Dusty: The Definitive Biography (Lucy O’Brien, 1997); www.dustyspringfield.co.uk

Download: iTunes; HMV Digital

They may have sent Dusty south, but the South had to meet her halfway. When this beautiful album first appeared, the general feeling among record buyers was that barge-poles just weren’t long enough. But they were in good company: Dusty loathed it too. She confessed that it took over a year before she could bear to play the record at all.

Atlantic’s idea had been a great one. Send Dusty down South with Jerry Wexler, just as they’d done with Aretha Franklin. After all, despite the West Hampstead background, the blonde bouffant and the history of pneumatic Euro-pop melodrama, here was a soulful vocalist whose subtlety was combined with impressive firepower. But, whether it was fear, fastidiousness or just cussedness, Dusty took an age to agree on material – though the eventual selections were impeccable, with Randy Newman, Goffin/King and Bacharach/David to the fore – and sessions in Muscle Shoals had to be cancelled.

Once actually in Memphis, Dusty’s painstaking way of working was at odds with Wexler’s, and she froze. Tension filled the air (as did a flying ashtray, at one point) in the absence of Dusty’s vocals. In fact she didn’t sing until she’d left Memphis, cutting the final vocals in Atlantic’s New York studios. Despite all the problems, the music was gorgeous. Clipped and slinky Memphis funk complements the easy-going material with great sophistication. Son Of A Preacher Man became the key track, but even more seductive were Breakfast In Bed and Just A Little Lovin’. Even in Wexler’s exalted company it is Springfield’s intuitive feel for each song’s emotional possibilities that remains the record’s ultimate virtue.